U23s - West Ham vs Manchester United

pratyush_utd

Can't tell DeGea and Onana apart.
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Will give us an idea who is going to be in first team tommorow.

Any news on who is out?
 

Yagami

Good post resistant
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Would be good to see Gomes and Garner playing.
I wouldn't mind seeing Gomes. Regarding Garner, I'm loving the partnership of Galbraith and Puigmal in the middle so I'd personally want to see them continue their run of games together.
 

Mickson

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We can play for two hours and we still won't score with Mellor, Puigmal, Traore and McGhee. Laird our only threat going forward. We need Ramazani and his speed asap.
 

lysglimt

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West Ham are a better side when our best players aren't playing.
 

In Rainbows

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The main u18s were in Germany playing a tournament all weekend. There is about a 1% chance Iqbal plays so it doesn't really matter who sits on the bench. We've done it a few times now listing u17s on the bench who don't even play with the u18s.
Good point.
 

Mickson

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No creativity in this team. I imagine Neil Wood won't be too happy. This team always seems to have several injured players, which is weird because they never seem to play any football. United managed to create one chance and that came in stoppage time and was a shot from distance from James Garner. Ethan Laird our most creative player going forward, although he was sluggish in defense.
 

fitzmertz

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Is there a chance that Mejbri could be involved tomorrow? Or has he been away in the 6 a side tournament?
 

KevinJoh

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Mejbri was in Germany, no way he is involved in the first team matches. Lucky guess is that he could go to the preseason camp as probably most of our players will miss the part as they will be rested after EURO 2020 and a lot of kids will have to go to the preseason tour.
 

lysglimt

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One major explanation why West Ham were so much better than us (in addition to them fielding close to their strongest side while we were missing half of our side) was the differance in age:

(Please note all the players having their birthday this week :) )

Anang 19 - Akinola 21, Ngakia 19, Cardoso 19, Rosa 19 - Coventry 19, Powell 21, Lewis 20 - Scully 21, Holland 21, Kemp 20 (21 on saturday)

Kovar 19 - Devine 18, Laird 18, Taylor 19 (20 on friday), Mengi 17 - Galbraith 18, Garner 18, Traore 18 (19 tomorrow), Puigmal 18 (19 on friday), McGhee 19, Mellor 19

Average age West Ham : 20 years old
Average age United: 18.5 years old

West Ham fielded 5 players who have either turned 21 or will do it this week, we had Max Taylor as the only player close to being 20.

So it's easy for the commentators to applaud players like Holland and Scully (who in fairness both had excellent games) - but they are 21 years old and should be close to the first team, not play for the reserves.

I still think if we played Levitt, Gomes, Williams, Chong and Greenwood we would have won. But now the most important thing is to field a strong side in the play-offs (We are not gonna catch West Ham I fear) - and make sure we get promoted.